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Post by Darko on Jun 2, 2016 15:03:34 GMT
The four Imperials sneakily made their way around the perimeter of the mutants' congregation. The mutants' bodies were parodies of their own sacred, pure flesh. Some carried crude, scavenged autoweapons and rusty blades as well as interesting improvisational weapons such as a chain tied around a brick. It seemed these mutants knew better than to take their chances. "Love the Emperor for He is the salvation of mankind Obey His words for He will lead you into the light of the future Heed His wisdom for He will protect you from evil Whisper His prayers with devotion, for they will save your soul Honour His servants, for they speak in His voice Tremble before His majesty, for we all walk in His immortal shadow."
The preacher's loud rhetoric was only amplified by the surprisingly excellent acoustics of the chamber. It also served to mask the footsteps of the already stealthy Imperials as they reached the far tunnel. Without hesitation, the group continued, led by Balalaika now. The darkness consumed them, the chamber growing ever-distant with each passing minute, each breath, each heartbeat. And then the screaming began. Gunshots followed. All four stopped and whirled on their feet, weapons ready. It was definitely coming from the mutant sanctuary. "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!" The orkish battlecry echoed throughout the tunnel. The gunshots decreased and the screaming increased. Then it stopped. Rook exchanged a glance with Korina, a glance that meant 'we should get the feth out of here.' "Up ahead - there is ladder to surface," Balalaika informed the group, speaking in barely more than an urgent whisper. One by one they picked themselves up onto the plascrete ledge housing the ladder and began the climb. First Balalaika, her long-las slung over her back, next Korina with the black box. Rook and Nathaniel were about to... calmly decide who would venture upward next when they heard splashes in the darkness, and voices. "If any ov dem are down 'ere, let the pups find em!" Bellowed a brutish voice. A sound like metal sliding preceded the sound of many stunted feet rapidly approaching. Half-squealing and half-roaring sounds heralded the onslaught of attack squigs. "Oh, hell," said Rook. The pair of them could either try to climb and escape before they arrived, or stand and fight.
Balalaika carefully pushed the thick plasteel plate upward, laspistol poking out into the light first, then her head followed as she climbed out. They were in an alleyway, with excellent cover, but no bearing on their location. As Korina hauled herself onto her feet, Balalaika beckoned her over to where she was crouching behind a waste disposal container as two ork fightas flew dangerously close to the ground at breakneck speeds. Up ahead, a considerable number of orks were gathered around a medicae emporium which appeared to have been surprisingly undamaged during the invasion. Outside, numerous humans seemed to have been... taken prisoner. Five ork nobs kept watch, as well as the various other greenskins milling around. None of the prisoners appeared to have suffered worse than slight flesh wounds, most likely when they were captured. Korina recognised several of them. Lord General Jordon Bastille, thrice-honoured hero of the Golgenna Reach and saviour of Kilmon V, was the most obvious. He had been presumed dead when the orks suicide bombed the forward command center, and morale had plummeted. If the troops saw him alive once more... her thoughts were cut short when her eyes fell on the others. Iulia Quinn was another member of Inquisitor Thrace's retinue, her personal savant. No one knew more of the Inquisitor's secrets than Iulia. The other prisoners appeared to be Guard officers of relatively high rank as well as a few Tech Priests, though it seemed the orks had dismembered their mechadendrites as well as any bionic limbs. So precise, so careful. A hunched greenskin wearing a white apron stained with fresh blood, with a crude, heavy bionic leg limped out of the medicae emporium. "Oi, one ov you runts bring me more prisoners! Them uvver ones is dead already n da warboss will be here in an hour for his answers! Get a move on ya lazy gits," he snarled before awkwardly rotating on the spot around his own metal leg, then hobbled back inside. A nob unceremoniously grabbed Quinn by the hair and began to drag her inside. She screamed and kicked the entire way, but the mammoth greenskin seemed to not even notice.
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Post by halonachos on Jun 3, 2016 0:30:56 GMT
"You go ahead, your pack is heavier so you'd take longer to get up." Nathanial said as he readied his weapon, "Although if you wish to give me a spare pack, I could toss it down the tunnel and make a delightful boom with it." he doubted it would be enough to collapse the tunnel unless it was in severe disrepair, but the tunnel should channel the explosion enough. "I'll wait for you to get mostly out, my carapace beats your flak should it funnel up there."
He began to fire a few shots across the tunnel at the estimated height of the squigs. Hopefully filling the tunnel with bursts of hellgun fire would do some damage or ward them off. "Now get to climbing, we've still got a job to do."
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coolyo294
Iconic
Slayer of Demons
Posts: 1,169
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Post by coolyo294 on Jun 3, 2016 4:23:13 GMT
Korina's blood ran cold when she saw Iulia. It was bad enough that she hadn't killed herself before falling capture to beasts as crude as Orks, but now it looked like she was about to be tortured for information. All of Inquisitor Thrace's operatives had undergone intense conditioning to resist interrogation, but whether or not her conditioning would hold was irrelevant. The risk she posed was far too great.
"I need to recover that woman, or at the very least kill her to ensure that what she knows remains secret. You are going to help me." Korina said quietly to Balailaika. "I'm going to go around the alley and find a way into the medicae emporium. Stay here or move to another position, I don't care. Just be ready to cover me with that long-las."
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Post by Warork on Jun 4, 2016 7:20:13 GMT
The Glory boy told him to go up the ladder...of course he fucking did.
Rook was about to let the stormtrooper have his little suicide mission. He mentally went through the motions of turning towards the ladder and climbing it to the surface...a salvation from this murky hellhole he now found himself in, however brief.
He was about to...but something in the stormtrooper's voice made Rook do something really stupid.
"If you think I'm about to let you have all the fun down here..." Rook started, a half sneer thrown towards the stormtrooper. "Then you're a lot dumber than I thought you were."
He hefted his flamer in his arms and with a flick of his thumb ignited the pilot light at the end of it which lept to life in a spark of yellow and blue light. He spat in the tepid water of the tunnel surrounding the ankles of his boots. The air stank of shit and greenskins who smelled like bigger piles of shit. Rook could hear the quick pattering of their attack squigs' clawed limbs churning their way through the muck.
"Me and you are both Guard. At the end of the day whether we live or die we do it together."
The dark, slavering shapes rounded the corner and Rook sprayed the entire tunnel with a cleansing fire.
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Post by halonachos on Jun 6, 2016 0:28:54 GMT
The roar of the flamer upset Nahanial the most, the noise was grating compared to the lack of compliance with issued orders the guardsman was displaying. "This is not about fun, trooper, this is not about some last stand to earn your place at the Emperor's side," he yelled while continuing controlled bursts through the fire, "do you think a sniper and interrogator can make it through the city alone? No matter how good she is at sneaking the Orks will find that sniper and she will be killed, the interrogator will suffer the same and the mission will fail. We are in a city, your weapon is better at city fighting than mine. It's strategy, not fun now get moving up there trooper!". Spittle dampened the inside of his mask as it covered an angry twitch of his lips. It was the one part of his body he could let spasm as such, he needed the rest to function steadily.
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Post by Lord Harrab on Jun 6, 2016 2:35:39 GMT
Balalaika took one final, regretful draw on her lho stick, watching it crumble to ash and flicking the stub away with a sigh. Inquisition wanted to rescue the woman, presumably the other prisoners too, despite the danger and risk it would bring down on them even if this raid was successful. "Khorosho." she said calmly, eyeing the building around her with professional eyes, even on a forgeworld the architecture was filled with handholds and little nooks where she could set up "I will wait for signs of combat before i will engage." She pointed, "i will cover that exit. Use it if you want covering fire on your escape" With that she slung her rifle over her back and started to climb the closest building, reaching a lip that ran around the midway point of the third floor where the statues and symbols of the Machine Cult stood, the sniper crept towards the edge that overlooked the target building, resting her rifle on one of the teeth of the large skull-and-cog symbol that stood proud there, and once more shrouded herself under her camo-cloak and panned her scope across the building, examining sight lines, the location of the orks that loitered and fought among themselves in the shadow of the building, waiting with the patience of a hunter.
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Post by Darko on Jun 6, 2016 14:45:56 GMT
The ravenous squigs skidded around the corner, their feet trampling through the ankle-high muck. The first one was domed by an expert shot from Nathaniel, and the next two were quickly dispatched by his next few shots. However, easily a dozen or more of the stunted, bipedal attack beasts came afterwards, their rows of razor sharp teeth still slick with mutant blood. Within seconds they would close the distance and overpower the two guardsmen by sheer weight of numbers.
Instead, within seconds their flesh began to run like liquid from their quickly blackening bones as burning prometheum engulfed the entire pack in the extremely confined space. A few seconds of sustained flames ensured they were all well and truly cleansed from the Emperor's realm. One of the less charred corpses convulsed and then exploded in a shower of gore, leaving the tunnel walls dripping with bestial organs.
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Post by Warork on Jun 6, 2016 16:34:09 GMT
The squigs, dull as they were, came on heedless of anything save their own bloodlust. Rook almost smiled as he squeezed the trigger on his flamer and sent a gout of bright, consuming, molten promethium down the tunnel, his weapon roaring like the great dragons of old Terra. He slowly turned the nozzle left, right, then left again, dousing the entire tunnel in glorious fire.
"Throne of Earth, do you EVER, shut the fuck up?!" He yelled as the stormtrooper continued to berate him.
They came on, little chubby red bodies, thick scaled, with wide mouths full of huge sharp teeth and grunting like pigs were turned into living torches. Rook listened to them squeal and scream, he drank in their deaths with a gory satisfaction. Finally, after being shot down and forced to run and hide like a scavvie in a hole he was finally able to turn his anger on his enemy. He loved that rush so much he almost forgot to let go of the trigger when the last squig fell on its face just a few feet from the two of them.
The bodies burned and flickered, their skin having blackened and blistered. Rook listened to them crackle in the heat and bathed in the glow of their slowly cooling corpses. He hefted his flamer and leaned it on his shoulder. One of the larger squigs ruptured from the heat and showered the two of them standing there with warm guts and viscera. A huge splatter hit Rook's face and helmet...and for the first time in several days, Rook chuckled. He wiped the offal from his face and set a hard stare on the stormtrooper in the new quiet darkness of the tunnel.
"Lets get something straight between me and you." Rook started, low and stoic. "The last man I took orders from who couldn't shut up...always did things by the book...that man got my entire platoon killed, maybe even my entire company. I don't take orders from you. I take them from your boss...if I'm feeling generous. I am getting out of this shithole alive. Cross me on that...and we're going to have serious problems."
Rook didn't wait for a reply. He hefted himself and his pack up the ladder and headed for the surface before the orks decided to come looking for their squigs.
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Post by halonachos on Jun 6, 2016 17:55:12 GMT
As the ignorant trooper began his climb, Nathanial reached for the valve on the back of his pack and quickly shut it off before grabbing the tanks and using them to pull the trooper back down to the ground. He could hear the ass of a man begin a series of counters but Nathanial quickly moved to silence the man by placing the barrel of his weapon onto the man's lips, "We will get this straight." he said sternly, "I am an agent of the inquisition, I have not always been. I have seen things far worse than this and an Ork invasion is the least of my concerns, what concerns me is the fact that an Inquisitor wants us to get an item off of this planet and keep it out of Ork hands and you have seemed hard pressed to get it through your skull that this is a necessity. Orks are not bright creatures, so how dangerous this item must be if an Inquisitor thinks Orks can use it for their own means." he kept the weapon steady. "I am not doing this for my survival or for your survival, I am doing this so that hopefully this planet, this sector, or even this entire segmentum may still survive. There are countless lives on the line, good Imperial children, women, and men who could easily suffer the same fate as this planet or worse if we fail and all you can consider is your own survival? Are you that selfish that you would sacrifice the lives of billions for your own? I do not do this for glory, I don't get awards or recognition for my work. People hate the Inquisition, people hate me because I work for the Inquisition, but I will be damned if I let an Ork invasion halt the accomplishment of an objective that could save the lives of Imperial citizens."
Nathanial lifted some pressure off of the man's face, "I have seen what happens when an Inquisitor fails their mission, that one in the Valkyrie died and I will not let this planet die with her because some haughty, arrogant trooper with a heavy weapon had a disdain for following orders. I said earlier that I am not a commissar but get this straight, I will not hesitate to find you wanting. This is your last, and final, warning. Do we have an understanding or should I just shoot you now?"
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Post by Warork on Jun 7, 2016 7:11:53 GMT
Laying on his back in the muck with a talkative, demanding stormtrooper hovering over him with a hellgun pressed to his face was not the way Rook had expected to die.
Of course, he couldn't really think about that right now considering the fact that he was just so fucking pissed off.
As the trooper talked, as he seemed to like to do, Rook went over his options in his head...He could try a grenade? Well, it would probably kill the asshole over him but it would also kill him so that wouldn't do. His laspistol? Even if he did manage to get it out in time he doubt it would get through the fucker's armor before he blew Rook's head off. His knife? Same deal as the pistol he supposed...
Instead, Rook once again did something stupid...and grabbed the end of that hellgun. He didn't jerk it this way or that which is why, he suspected, the trooper didn't snatch it back or pull the trigger, twitchy as he was. Instead, Rook pulled the end of the hellgun up to sit right on his forehead.
"Go ahead then." He said "Pull that fucking trigger and show me how big a man you are."
There was a silence inside the tunnel as the two sat there staring at one another, saying nothing.
"Well? Where was all that shit from a minute ago, huh?" Rook teased. "You can't do it, you know why? You need me. There are four of us against an entire horde out there...I die, your chances of getting your precious box to wherever the fuck it needs to go drops pretty badly. You get that, I know you do, that's why I'm not dead yet."
Rook let go of the hellgun and let his helmet sag back into the muck with a wet thump. This man tired him so greatly he almost wished he had pulled the trigger.
"And you know what? We need your dumbass too." He let those words sink in for a moment before he continued. "Yeah, sure, I don't fucking like you and if our positions were switched right now I'd probably feed you lasbolts. I think you, your stupid ass mission, your cuntbitch inquisitor and this entire stinking cesspool of a planet can all go to hell. I didn't sign up to save the fucking Imperium. Fuck, I didn't sign up period."
He sighed, the conscription back home had been a painful memory, one he had buried a long time ago along with all the memories of his life before the guard that he could never go back to.
"I stayed down here because if we don't stick together we'll all die alone. But none of that matters now. Point is, you're right. We're in the shit. Four against...too many to fucking count...you really wanna make it three?"
Rook turned his head and spat...more out of annoyance than anything else. But when he turned his head back to the stormtrooper he met whatever eyes he had behind that mask with his own. He didn't want to die but the fear of death had left those eyes a long time ago.
"So what's it gonna be, Captain Imperium?"
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